Monday, September 6, 2010

Food Rationing Begins In Venezuela - Chavez Offers ‘Good Life Card’

This is what happens when you have a "Democracy" that turns into a dictatorship. And the Hollywood elite that love Chavez wants us to be more like Venezuela. I wouldn't mind their gas prices at like 20 cents a gallon, but everything else about that country, it ain't worth it. Screw that. Somehow Chavez, like Obama, will probably blame this on the USA.

It’s called the ‘Good Life Card’ and Hugo Chavez says don’t leave home without it! Due to the shortages of food and rising inflation in Venezuela, President Chavez is introducing the ‘Good Life Card’ to help people acquire groceries. Publicly intended to beat inflation, the real purpose of the card is to give the government more control over its citizens.

For some months now, Chavez has already begun a policy of cracking down on hoarding. This was recently extended to include police raids on private food stores and warehouses. The moves are seen as an effort to divert all produce and processing of food to government run stores and plants.

The ‘Good Life Card’ is said to be a way for the government to monitor supply and prices better. Shortages of many staple items, like rice and milk, and been becoming acute. Meat products are growing more scarce each week. Venezuela, which had once been an exporter of food, now must import nearly half of all it needs.

Such is life under the Socialism of Hugo Chavez. While many Hollywood actors from America befriend Chavez and dream of Obama copying Chavez here, life in Venezuela continues to decline. The standard of living has been falling dramatically since the Chavez regime took over.

State-run grocery stores have been suffering for many months with various food shortages. But, as is always the case in Socialist nations, the problem is the government, not hoarding. Reports of large caches of food in government warehouses were found rotting because they were not distributed. In the port of Puerto Cabello, some 30,000 tons of food were found spoiled.

In 2003, the government began imposing price controls on food and each year the problem only gets worse. The original state-run chain of grocery stores, Mercal, has been supplemented with a new one, PDVAL, in 2008. In just the first five months of 2010, the price of food has shot up some 21%. Chavez, of course, blames greedy capitalists and hoarding.

Hugo Chavez introducing Venezuela to the ‘Good Life Card’ is about as Orwellian as it gets. Obviously it’s not about having a ‘good life’, it’s about state-control over your purchases. One can only imagine when Obama will do the same here. America has also gone from an exporter of food to now importing close to 25%.